Robert Donald Locke 52 min read

Major Lance Cooper watches the last-minute crews swarm the Cosmos XII, burning with pride and hunger, after long years, he's made it to the interstellar Big League, ready to fly among the stars.

Robert Donald Locke's 1961 story pairs a spacer's ambition with an alternate-history and psi twist. Sharp, atmospheric golden-age SF. Read it for a story where a pilot's dream of the stars opens onto a doorway between worlds that lie next door to our own.

In its time

Published in 1961, during the 1960s, new wave revolutionizes the genre.

Reading it

52 min read (a novelette, room for a turn or two).

Illustrated by

Douglas